Letter: Fondo Milagroso de Tahoe (Tahoe Miracle Fund) seeks donors to fill need

During the course of executing the 2020 Census, the El Dorado Community Foundation was tasked with increasing the census numbers in two distinct census tracks in South Lake Tahoe. These two tracks have historically reported the lowest response rate for the census over the last twenty years.

In order to achieve the goal of increasing the response rate the foundation would need to understand the barriers that exist, either perceived or real, to the self-reporting of households. Knowing that these two census tracks serve a diverse community it was reasonable to ascertain that the reasons for a low self-response rate would be as diverse as the community. An assumption that came to be true.

Embedded within the census tracks of the community are competing needs. Housing, food security, employment security, education, health and wellness and documented residence status. All of these factors are contributors to barriers to full and complete participation.

As a foundation, we learned long ago, the best way to integrate in a community is from the inside out. Establishing trust and credibility are critical to removing barriers of distrust and reluctance to engage. That is why the foundation created Fondo Milagroso de Tahoe (Tahoe Miracle Fund), a fund to serve the “underserved” community of South Lake Tahoe.

Since the fund’s inception this year, the amount of need has surprised us and surpassed our ability to meet all the various request for assistance. With a revised application process that limits assistance to emergency situations along with new partners in the process such as Liberty Utilities, and Barton Foundation, the confidence grows that we can assist the needs in a comprehensive and appropriate manner safeguarding the individual concerns while addressing the pressing issues of need.

The goal is to gain trust from trust grows engagement from engagement comes solutions and from solutions we build a better community for all.

To donate to Fondo Milagroso de Tahoe, or any fund of the El Dorado Community Foundation, visit our website at https://eldoradocf.org/, https://eldoradocf.org/our-funds/, or contact kathy@eldoradocf.org.

We can only do this together.

- Bill Roby is the executive director of the El Dorado Community Foundation